Minerva Protects Pax from Mars

When Rubens made this he was not in London to paint but to negotiate. He was in England in 1629 as a diplomat, an envoy of the Spanish king, trying to broker peace between Spain and England, and he painted this as an argument in oil. Peace sits at the centre, pressing milk from her breast and spilling fruit and gold toward a cluster of children, while behind her the helmeted goddess Minerva shoves the armoured god of war back into the dark. The children were real, the sons and daughters of Balthasar Gerbier, the man Rubens was lodging with. He gave the finished painting to Charles the First as a gift. The mission worked. England and Spain signed a peace treaty in November 1630.